Time Capsule (Time Machine) error -1

Question

My 14-month old 1TB TC seems to be having a disk hardware problem. It's been working without issue since I got it in November 2009. The other day, I got an error message (I didn't record it) that stated something to the effect of "TM couldn't validate your backup, so we have to do a complete new backup". I let it do its thing, but it failed with the new error message "The backup disk image “/Volumes/+drive name+ 1.sparsebundle” could not be created (error -1)." In trying to restart the TC, the hard drive was making loud mechanical clicking noises for several minutes before failing again with the error message. At one point I was able to get the drive to mount on the desktop and ran Disk Utility on the sparse bundle file (twice), and it indicated it was fine. However, my backup data was no where to be found. I tried setting up the TC again as the backup drive, but got the same loud clicking noises and error message as above. I tried to archive what data was on the drive from the Airport Utility, but it also crapped out after saving some data (same loud clicking noises for some minutes and no additional progress on saving data). I cancelled the archive and turned off Time Machine for now.
Any clues? By the way, the WiFi network portion of the TC is still working fine. My guess is a hard drive failure. I plan to call Apple tech support to see if the TC is covered by APP (bought the TC with my new iMac). Thanks for any insights or advice.

Answer 1

Woodsman wrote:
By the way, they replaced only the TC unit itself with a new one. It had been shipped in a plain brown box with nothing else, not the retail packaging.
That's probably a refurbished unit.
Both the AppleCare rep and all the employees at the Store were professional and courteous. When you have to use AC, its always a first class experience.
Maybe not always, but most of the time. Apple always gets the highest marks for customer service.
As I type this, Time Machine is creating a new backup.
Great!
I'm thinking rather than set it on auto-pilot, I may make manual backups every couple of days. I really don't need anything more frequent than that. Perhaps the constant churn of the hourly backups (when the iMac is on) is a contributing factor to the TC hard drive's demise. All's well that ends well.
That's really not a good idea. Disk drives are made to be used, and Time Machine backups are less stressful than most other uses of a drive, since it's idle most of the time, and not trying to do several things at once.
The great thing about the hourly backups is, when you accidentally change or delete the wrong file (like doing a "Save" when you should have done "Save As"), or something turns up corrupted, you've got an excellent chance of recovering a previous version.
And it's far too easy to forget to do backups manually, and find yourself 3 or 4 days behind (or worse) when something awful happens to your Mac.
Anyhow, glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the feedback.